


until chaos calls us home

by shatterthelight



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F, Five Ways, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 08:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12077571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatterthelight/pseuds/shatterthelight
Summary: I know we were always supposed to be temporary. And maybe I was temporary for you.But whatever you did to me - whatever it was, I think it was permanent.Five times Luisa Alver doesn't call Rose Solano, and one time she does.





	until chaos calls us home

**Author's Note:**

> GOSH OKAY. So fun fact: this was the first serious Roisa piece I ever started writing. _Walking the Line_ actually started off as a part of this oneshot, until it grew so much that I realized it'd function much more effectively as its own thing.
> 
> Thanks to months between bursts of inspiration and wavering interest in this pairing overall, this has been more than a two-year endeavor for me, and the result is like, twice as long as I'd ever expected it to be, haha. It was a struggle at times, but I knew that I had to finish it one day, and I'm so glad I did.
> 
> So anyway! As the tags say, this fic is pre-canon. I started writing it during the hiatus between season one and season two, so there are some things that may not line up, but for the most part I really did try to keep it canon compliant (the timeline on this show is hell to make sense of, you guys). It's deeply rooted in Roisa, but it's Luisa-centric at heart. And if I'm being honest, it's probably as much a Solano Sibling fic as it is a Roisa fic. Because I'm self-indulgent and I can do what I want. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> It's probably still messy around the edges, but after everything it took for me to get it here, I'm still happy with it. I hope you are too. <3

**four years ago**

Luisa sits on the balcony of her hotel room, her legs curled up beneath her, as a vivid rainbow of colors explodes across the night sky. The air smells like sea salt and cigar smoke and still tastes vaguely like the barbecues she hadn't taken part in. She's been here for an hour now, doing nothing but watching the fireworks and listening to the excited shrieks of the children below.

It's been a year since she met her.

She can still picture the moment when she closes her eyes. Red dress, red hair, pink-red lips. The sway of Rose's hips, the words Luisa thought when she first saw her – nothing poetic, literally  _holy shit,_ because, well. What else could she say?  

> _The woman in red sits beside her, and Luisa feels the spark, sharp and instantaneous, drawing them together. Forcing their eyes to meet._
> 
> _"Can I buy you a drink?"_
> 
> _"Thirty-four days sober."_

She remembers waiting for Rose to run, because everyone is attracted to pretty faces and perfect ideas, but no one is ever brave enough, stupid enough, to fall for a woman with baggage in her hands and demons beneath her skin.

Rose hadn't run.  

> " _Why a bar, then, if you don't mind me asking?"_
> 
> _"I have enough self-control to be a functioning human being." Luisa doesn't mean to sound bitter, but it still comes out with a bite; she's heard variants of this question a million times in the last month. Her father has taken to handling her like she has the word 'fragile' printed in big block letters across her forehead, and her brother's been following suit, probably because it gives him an excuse not to have a conversation with her made up of words with more than one syllable. It's all too tempting to let herself break on purpose, just so they can see what shattered glass really looks like._
> 
> _She's already glued herself back together once, though. She can't imagine doing it a second time; you can only lose so many pieces of yourself before the ones left over stop fitting together._
> 
> _The woman looks sorry but doesn't say it, and Luisa panics, thinking she's already ruined whatever this was about to become. So she clears her throat, softens her voice, and says, "I'm Luisa."_
> 
> " _Rose."_

Luisa's hip vibrates, and she tears her stare away from the fireworks long enough to see Rafael's name and face light up the screen of her phone. She considers not answering, but he'll either just keep calling or give up after the first try. And if he gives up, Luisa will read way too much into it and spend the next hour and a half wondering if she should call back or not, so she takes a deep breath and presses _Accept._

"Are you okay?" He doesn't say hello.

"I'm fine." She is. Or maybe not. She isn't actually sure.

"Dad's angry that we haven't seen you all day. It's the fourth of July, Lu!"

She grips her phone tightly in her hand and pretends Rafael sounds disappointed instead of irritated. Pretends he's calling because he'd missed her, not because her decision to keep to herself that night had inconvenienced him.

How long has she been his obligation instead of his sister?   

> " _Do you want to get out of here?"_
> 
> _Rose is leaning so close that Luisa can feel the heat of her breath wisp across her face. Her grin is almost feline, and something Luisa so desperately wants to believe is desire burns in those blue, blue eyes, like fire crackling under a layer of ice._
> 
> _"Yes."_

"I didn't want to be around all of that excitement." She shudders to think of what the lobby must have looked like earlier that evening. Too many bodies crowded in one room, yelling until their voices grow hoarse, clinking beer bottles together and rambling on and on about patriotism or something to that effect.

"You didn't have to come to the party," Rafael says. "Just dinner. That's all Dad asked you to do. He wanted it to be family time. And I know he's full of shit, but still. Way to throw me to the wolves."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a kid. It doesn't matter what Dad asks me to do anymore." And why should it? It had never mattered to her brother.

Rafael pauses on the other end of the line, and in the silence that stretches between her last word and his next one, she imagines what dinner must have been like. Petra sitting at Raf's side, her golden hair curled like a princess, her ring finger on permanent display so she can flaunt the oversized diamond that he’d given her when he proposed three weeks ago.

Her father would have been front and center, just like always – and at his side, Rose, her eyes faking a sparkle as she hangs onto Emilio’s- onto her _husband's_ every word. In a year’s time, Rose has learned precisely which jokes to laugh at, when to nod and say, "Oh, I agree," has learned that Emilio prefers to be called _darling_ rather than _honey_ or _dear._ She's a pro at it now, being a trophy wife, and it makes Luisa sick to watch.

She’d probably been wearing earrings longer than Luisa's pinky finger, her own rock of an engagement ring catching the light every time she raised her glass of wine. 

"Then why are you even at the hotel, Luisa?"

Because it's what she did. It's what they did every year. Back when it was just her and Rafael and their father and stepmothers she'd never slept with, she abandoned her lonely house on the fourth of July and stayed in a suite at one of her family's hotels, and after the party and dinner, the three of them stood on the beach and launched fireworks into the sky. For twenty-four hours, they plastered on smiles and pretended to be a happy family, and maybe there were even moments when they didn't have to pretend.

The tradition had hit its first bump last year, when her father had straight up forbidden her from going anywhere near the hotel party and all that alcohol.

> _Rose's laugh is surprisingly girlish, soft and musical and so, so pretty that Luisa keeps telling her ridiculous stories just so she can keep hearing it._
> 
> _She’s recounting the time she and her friends back in college had stolen two shopping carts from a local department store so they could race them down a hill (she still has a scar on her ankle, but the store had never caught them, so as far as she’s concerned it had totally been worth it) when Rose rests her hand over Luisa’s. It’s the first time skin touches skin, and it sends a tingle up Luisa’s spine._
> 
> _"It was a smart idea to come here."_
> 
> _Rose isn't a local, so she'd let Luisa pick out their hideaway. Luisa has always liked the atmosphere of a pool at night, the dark, quiet intimacy when it’s just you and the water and maybe a pretty girl if you’re lucky._ _Rose had been the first one to kick her shoes off and dip her feet in, and now they're sitting closer than Luisa can believe._
> 
> _"So,” Rose murmurs, “why did you go all by yourself to a bar tonight instead of joining in on all the celebration?" From their spot at the poolside, they can hear the distant buzz of the nearby beachgoers, probably preparing to launch fireworks in the name of freedom._
> 
> _...Well._ _She doesn't think she has a good answer to that question. 'My dad wouldn't let me go to the party at his hotel on account of all the booze,' is embarrassing, makes her sound like a child. 'I usually spend the fourth with my dad and brother, but even though I'm holding myself together, my family still feels like it's falling apart,' is_ far  _too personal; she's not ready to get that deep, not when she's already lost her breath just touching the surface._
> 
> _But she knows, in the back of her mind, that she hadn't been there because her dad and Raf ditched her. She’d wanted to prove to herself that she could resist temptation when the two of them thought she couldn't. She’d wanted to prove that she was in control of her own life again._
> 
> _Luisa is thirty-four days sober, and she'd spent those thirty-four days struggling to find the life she'd had before 'alcoholic' had become her core personality trait. Thus far, her struggling had only amounted to half a dozen arguments with her family, a blind date with a girl named Allison that had somehow ended with them banging on the floor of Allison's bathroom (Luisa still hasn't called her back, doesn't think she's going to), and approximately thirteen slices of burnt toast._
> 
> _Maybe, Luisa thinks, as she stares into the eyes of this beautiful, enigmatic woman, she needs to stop trying to go back in time. After all, her life before it was 'drunk all the time' was 'series of unpleasant events and feelings that made her want to be drunk all the time.'_
> 
> _Here she is, side by side with someone who never knew the Luisa she was before, someone who's eager to know the Luisa she is now. Someone who isn't running, someone who had walked into a bar full of women and chosen to sit next to her. Someone who's still here, her hand over Luisa's, her bare feet circling in the pool, just inches from Luisa's own._
> 
> _Rose looks at her, head slightly tilted, still waiting for an answer, and Luisa takes a leap off the edge._
> 
> _"I think..."_
> 
> _Here she is._
> 
> " _I think I want to start moving forward."_

"Luisa."

"Huh?"

"I said, why even bother coming to stay at the hotel this year if all you planned on doing was hiding away in your room?"

 _I'm not hiding,_ Luisa wants to say, except she is. She's hiding from her brother's insufferable fiancé, whose disdain for Luisa is evident beneath that sickly sweet kindness. She's hiding from her father's incessant questions about why she's so reluctant to take her and Allison's relationship beyond casual dating, especially now that Rafael and Petra are engaged.

She's hiding from Rose Solano, her father's wife, the newest stepmother – who knows how long she'll last, really? – the woman Luisa will always hate for not being who she wants her to be, for swooping in, time and time again, to steal her heart and then stalk away the next morning with the words _this isn’t anything_ on her lips.

And she's hiding from herself, too. From the bitter person she's afraid she'll become if she lets herself get sucked into all of that bullshit.

"I wanted to watch the fireworks," Luisa answers. It sounds less pathetic than the truth, which is that, if she was going to spend the day alone, she hadn't wanted to do it in an empty house. "The view from here is really beautiful."

As if to illustrate her point, a shower of gold erupts through the dark with a boom that makes her jump on impulse. It's followed by a burst of red, then one of purple, another of brilliant blue. It _is_ beautiful. Breathtaking, even.

 _Are you watching them?_ He probably isn't, but she hopes he is anyway. She doesn't ask. Doesn't take the chance to be disappointed.

"I'm sorry I didn't go tonight." If she could turn back time, she doesn't think she'd do it any differently. But he doesn't need to know that.    

> _"How long are you in town?"_
> 
> _Rose doesn't look away from Luisa's_ _lips as she says, "The weekend."_
> 
> _Luisa's heart plummets straight into her stomach. Of course. Good things are always temporary. Such is the way of her life._
> 
> _Oblivious to Luisa's internal crisis, Rose continues. "I'm trying to close this deal, but my heart's not in it."_
> 
> _She looks up, catches Luisa's eye, and for the briefest moment, Luisa stops breathing altogether. She knows that look. She knows exactly where Rose's heart is right now._
> 
> _"I really did not expect this." Rose's voice is hushed, yearning, makes Luisa's heart hammer in her chest. God, she's so beautiful._
> 
> _She's temporary, but she's here, she's now, and she's so beautiful, and the_ _electricity crackling between them has Luisa ready to live in the moment._
> 
> _"I guess you never know when lightning is gonna strike."_
> 
> _When Rose kisses her, the fireworks go off, loud enough that she can faintly hear them over the roaring in her ears._

Rafael doesn’t speak for a long time, and when he does, his words are both soft and strained. "I love you, Luisa." She draws in a sharp intake of air. She hasn’t heard those words from him in so long. Not with that much pain or sincerity. "You know I love you, right?"

And she does. She really, really does. That's what makes everything hurt so badly. "Yeah. I know."

"Good night."

"I love you, too. Just so you know."

"I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah." Deep breath. _Deep breath._ "You will. I promise."

She hangs up before she can take it back.     

> _Rose pulls away, eyes wide, and Luisa knows, without a single doubt, that they're both falling._
> 
> _Tonight is all they have. So tonight, they'll drown together._

Rafael's words still ringing in her head, Luisa scrolls through her contact list until she finds Rose's name, and she sits there with her thumb frozen right above the call button.

Don't.

Don't do this.

She can't do this.

_I want to hear your voice._

She can't do this.

Instead, she hits _Message,_ and, into the safety of the text box, she writes until her fingers ache.

 _Do you remember the night we met, Rose?_ she types.

_It was exactly a year ago. You were in red and I was in blue and when we kissed, fireworks went off, like we were in a movie. Do you remember that?_

Somewhere in the back of her head, a voice tells her to stop, tells her none of it matters anyway. Of course Rose remembers, but she's not Rose anymore, she's Mrs. Solano, and Mrs. Solano has bigger concerns than her stepdaughter's ever-growing pile of issues.

_What did you wear tonight? Were you in red again? Or maybe you wore white. I love it when you wear white. You look like someone who couldn't hurt anyone when you wear white._

Stop.

_Who were you before you married my father? What was your last name? What was your family like? You never talk about them. When did you decide to become a lawyer? I know you were good. I don't know how I know because you never talk about that either, but I know you were good._

_Who are you?_

She tastes salt on her lips and wipes the back of her hand over her eyes.

_I know we were always supposed to be temporary. And maybe I was temporary for you._

_But whatever you did to me – whatever it was, I think it was permanent._

She reads and rereads the entire message four times, each time feeling more and more pathetic. She highlights the whole thing and deletes every word with a single press of the backspace key.

Then she texts Allison.

_Come over tomorrow._

Luisa turns off her phone and tosses it onto the table. It's getting late and the night air is growing cold, so she retreats inside for a minute and comes back out with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

Tomorrow, she'll check out of her hotel room and drive back to her lonely house. She'll ask Rafael to lunch and maybe even invite Petra, and she'll hate it a little but not as much as she'll expect to and she'll say _let's do this again sometime,_ and she'll mean it.

Allison will come over for dinner and Luisa will remember why they're still dating, and she'll fall asleep with someone in her bed and that someone will still be there when she wakes up, and she won't, not for a second, think about calling Rose. And she'll start moving forward again.

Tonight, though, is a night for living in the past.

Tonight, Luisa is going to watch the fireworks.

 

* * *

 

**three years ago**

She’d be lying if she said there were never missteps.

“Rafael, calm _down._ ” Her phone is balanced precariously between her head and shoulder, an art she’s mastered after a lifetime of aggressive multitasking. In her left hand is the empanada she _had_ been eating until her brother decided to pitch another fit to her about his husbandly insecurities, and in her right hand are three bags that contain the results of the retail therapy she’d finally indulged in today. “Petra loves you. She’ll be happy no matter what you do.”

“It’s our first wedding anniversary, Lu.” The stress seeping out of the speaker is so palpable that Luisa has to resist the urge to wipe it off her neck. “I just want it to be special, you know?”

“I never knew you were such a sap.”

“I'm serious!"

It’s all she can do to pay attention to him as she navigates the bustling Miami sidewalk, but his week of fretting is half the reason she’d _needed_ retail therapy (the other half being that her car is currently stuck getting repaired at the dealership after some asshole sideswiped her the other day) and, as much as she loves how easy it’s becoming for them to talk again, he’s really starting to grate on her nerves. “Raf. Listen. You’re a rich man with good taste. I’m _sure_ you’ll pull it off.”

She bumps into someone and stumbles, makes a hasty apology that the other person probably doesn’t even hear. Luisa inhales through her teeth and takes a moment to readjust herself so she can properly hold her phone and shift back and forth on her feet before walking on. Bad day to wear heels.

“Look,” she steps forward onto the crosswalk, “if you want me to, I can come over later and help you figure out-”

“ _Luisa!_ ”

A tight grip on her left wrist yanks her backwards and suddenly the world is a mess of loud honking and screeching tires. As she’s being pulled, her foot twists the wrong way and it hurts so badly that it tears a shriek from her lungs and throws her off balance, and next thing she knows she’s sprawled on the sidewalk as the car she’d narrowly avoided getting crushed by speeds away. The whole ordeal occurs in the timespan of about five seconds and leaves her head spinning, the breath knocked out of her.

“Luisa, Luisa, oh my god. Are you alright?”

Her eyes flutter open, and she gasps, forces air into her lungs. Too stunned to move, she sets her attention on the curtain of red hair falling beside her.

It takes her mind a moment to focus, and when it does, she wonders if she’s hallucinating. “…Rose?”

“ _Pay attention!_ ” Rose, wide-eyed beside her, sounds more frantic than Luisa has ever heard her. “You could have just been _killed_.”

“Luisa?” a faint voice shouts nearby. “Luisa? Luisa?!”

“…Oh!” Luisa fumbles for her phone, miraculously undamaged, and holds it to her ear with a shaky hand. “R-Raf,” is all she can manage.

“What the hell just happened?!”

Luisa looks at the road where she was almost flattened, her bags haphazardly tossed behind her, her half-eaten empanada on the ground. Then her eyes come to rest on the woman who saved her life.

“I’m going to have to call you back.”

She hangs up before Rafael can say anything else, and then she asks, “What are you doing here?”

Rose crosses her arms, demeanor shifting instantly. “I do _live_ in Miami. And you’re _welcome_.”

She hadn’t meant it that way, just that – god, of all the four-hundred _thousand_ people in Miami, what were the chances, what kind of cosmic _joke_ -

“Thank you,” she sighs, and tries to put enough force into the words to prove that she means it. “Seriously.”

“There’s a difference between being absentminded and _walking_ into _traffic_.”

“I know. I- I can’t believe I did that.” Breathing is easier now, but she's still trembly all over. Nearly becoming roadkill is a low point even for her. You don’t look both ways _one time_ … “Damn. I was really enjoying that empanada.”

Rose rolls her eyes, but she softens around the edges. “Can you stand?”

She holds her hand out, and Luisa hesitates before taking it and letting Rose help her to her feet.

Or try to, anyway, before the strain on her left foot makes her hiss involuntarily.

Rose manages to catch her before she ends up sprawled out on the sidewalk a second time. Luisa lets herself sink into her arms without thinking and uh, okay, shit, but they both pretend not to notice.

Brow furrowed in concern, Rose helps Luisa limp to a nearby bench, then goes to retrieve Luisa’s fallen bags while Luisa sits back, closes her eyes, and exhales.

“Do you feel dizzy?” Rose asks when she comes back.

She _feels_ like an idiot. "No. I'm fine." Luisa bends over and examines the troublesome foot. She rolls her ankle around in a circle and winces, but it isn’t bruising, and nothing seems to be broken. “I must have just sprained it when you pulled me back.”

“I should take you to a doctor.”

Her heartrate quickens. “I _am_ a doctor.”

“You’re an OBGYN.”

“Semantics.”

She gets a frown of disapproval for that. “You know, that devil-may-care attitude is what got you here.”

The hair on the back of Luisa’s neck bristles, but she doesn’t have a good retort. Still, she’s not about to waste time in an emergency room so someone can tell her what she already knows, particularly not in the company of any Rose Solanos. “I’ve sprained an ankle before, Rose, it’s not a big deal. I even have ACE bandages at home. I’ll be fine.” She chews her lip before asking, “Really, though, what _are_ you doing here?”

“I went to lunch.”

“Alone?”

Rose narrows her eyes. “Your father and I aren’t attached at the hip, Luisa.”

Thank god for that. But in all the time she’s known her, Luisa hasn’t really known Rose to have friends, and she wonders if it’s a conscious choice or the natural result of keeping everyone at arm’s length. “Sorry. I was just wondering.”

“And you?”

“Shopping. Walking home.” She gestures to her phone. “Trying to keep my brother from imploding over anniversary anxiety. All very fun stuff.”

“Walking?”

“My car’s being repaired. Listen, I really hate to ask,” and she really, really, _really_ does, so much that her mouth tastes like bile, “but if you could give me a ride home, that’d be lovely.”

“Of course I will,” Rose says, and Luisa is surprised to hear not even the slightest tinge of snark in her response. “Of course.”

 

By the time they reach her house, Luisa, someone save her, _misses_ Rafael’s whining, which had been far more bearable than the awkward-unresolved-more-than-vaguely-sexual-but-we’re-not-gonna-talk-about-it tension between her and Rose that had hung over the entire car ride. 

Rose wraps her arm around Luisa’s waist to help her inside, and just the nearness of her makes Luisa want to shiver and run away and jump into a pool or maybe off a cliff. There is literally nothing about her current situation that isn’t terrible. Except that Rose smells like vanilla… which is actually maybe the worst part. No. Definitely the worst part. Oh, god. Maybe she _should_ see a doctor. 

Once Luisa is settled on the couch, foot propped up on a pillow, Rose takes it upon herself to fetch some ice and those ACE bandages (considering the organizational system of Luisa’s closet – which is that there isn’t one – she finds them surprisingly quickly). While she’s doing that, Luisa checks her phone to find five missed calls and four times as many text messages from Rafael. She taps his number without reading them.

“You need to start doing those calming exercises again,” she says as soon as he picks up.

“Luisawhatthe _hell—_ ”

“I just, uh, had a little spill.” Her eyes follow Rose as she walks back into the room. Luisa mouths Rafael’s name; Rose nods and presses the icepack against her foot. “I’m fine.”

“I heard a car horn.”

“It’s fine.”

“I heard you _yell_.” 

“Don’t you have an anniversary to worry about?”

“Lu.”

“Raf.” Absolutely no way is she about to tell him she nearly got squished like a bug because her spacey ass wasn’t paying attention. That is _not_ something she needs him to be able to hold over her head for the next decade. “Look. I… fell. I’m fine. I’m at home now. I did sprain my ankle, though, so I’m going to have to rescind my earlier offer to go over to your house and help you work out your irrational fears of, like, failing as a husband or whatever.”

“You _what?_ Should I come over?”

“No,” she says a little too quickly, though her heart warms to hear him ask. A year ago, just the thought of that would have been absurd. “Someone is with me already. I’m good.”

“Who? Allison?”

She lets her eyes meet Rose’s for a second. And then a second turns into three seconds, and then five. Her stomach does a somersault. “A friend. I’ve got to go. Don’t worry about me, everything is A-OK.”

When she hangs up, Rose smirks. “So I’m your friend?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Luisa sits up enough to grab the ACE bandages from where Rose set them on the couch. “Here, let me wrap it.”

Rose watches as she does so, forehead crinkling. “That looks complicated.”

It really isn’t, although maybe she only thinks so because she’s so well-practiced at this kind of thing. She knows what she’s doing, and in the face of Rose’s confusion, she lets herself relish in the fact that this is something she understands. Something she’s _good_ at. When she finishes, she leans back onto the pillows.

Rose bends down right beside her, her uncertain hands turning over in her lap. “Do you need anything else?”

She can smell the vanilla again and her heart starts pounding. “I-I… no... I’m good. And thank you. Truly."

Her smirk grows, blue eyes twinkling. “For saving your life or bringing you home?”

The tension is still wrapped around both of them, pulling their energy together like magnets that never learn their lesson. “Don’t push it.”

She’s grown used to Rose being in her life in all the wrong ways, but she can’t remember the last time they were alone together like this, only that it must have been over a year ago and probably involved sex and powdered sugar. She’s been trying to let all those memories, all those short-lived escapades, stay locked away in the motel rooms she and Rose would run off to whenever Rose would stop pretending to be happy long enough to throw Luisa’s entire world off center. Those twisted little adventures are exactly what Luisa is trying to move on from.

Rose traces her thumb over the back of Luisa's hand, and _this_ is exactly what Luisa is trying to move on from. “Please don’t ever scare me like that again.”

They hold each other’s gazes, and in Rose’s eyes, Luisa sees water and fireworks and a million bad decisions scattered like little crumpled balls of paper throughout their history. She wonders what Rose sees in hers.

“I’ll try not to,” Luisa mumbles. She really just _still_ cannot believe it. She can hear it, the honking and the screeching and _Luisa_ and the true weight of it hits her then. She could have died. She could have _died,_ and she can’t imagine a more idiotic way to go. She could have died, holy hell.

“Are you alright?” Rose asks. Luisa lets out her breath, willing away all the sounds in her ears. Her shoulders are tense, and she tries – and fails – to relax them. “Do you- should I get you a glass of water?”

“I’d prefer a Xanax," she says dryly. She stares up at the ceiling fan. Sometimes, back when she was a teenager and she got stressed out, she’d turn her fan on and lay flat on her bed, and she’d count how many times it spun until she felt normal again. She hasn't done that in forever, not since  _calming down_  had gotten a little more complicated than that. “No, really, I’m okay. You know me. I’m made of iron.” She glances at her foot. “Or maybe something a little more malleable than that. But still. I’ll live.”

Rose’s eyes flicker down at the floor when Luisa says _you know me_ ; she looks back up quickly, but Luisa still catches the movement. They haven’t been… _intimate_ in a long time, but Luisa is still always so hyperaware of every little change in Rose's expression. That face of hers betrays so little that, when the emotions do slip through, Luisa can’t help but want to grab each and every one of them and hold them safe in her pocket, where she can pull them out later and roll them between her fingers and try to understand what’s going on in that pretty head of hers.

Luisa presses her hand against her chest. Her heart races beneath her palm so fast, it’s a wonder she can even breathe, and it has nothing to do with the car this time. Rose is wrong. They aren’t friends. They’d never learned how to be. “You should go.”

The statement is heavy and it aches more than she wants to admit, but she knows it’s true. She’s been down this road too many times before, and she refuses to do it again. She’s bigger than this now.

Rose’s face falls and then hardens, and both stab Luisa so hard she can’t decide which hurts worse.

But Rose doesn’t argue. She just stands and takes her purse from the coffee table. “If you need anything,” she says on her way to the door, “anything at all, call me. Okay? Please call me.”

And then she’s gone.

When the door shuts, Luisa covers her face with her hands and groans. Sex or no sex, being alone with Rose is still  _far_  too much like swimming in a shark tank with an open wound. Not to mention that she has a _girlfriend_. One she’s so head over heels for that they’ve recently started talking about moving in together. She should call her. She should.

But she doesn’t call Allison, and she doesn’t call Rose, and she presses the ice against her swollen ankle and swears off retail therapy forever.

 

* * *

 

**two years ago**

Luisa and Allison finally finish moving the last of their stuff into their new house on Saturday morning. Allison pulls Luisa into her arms and they spin around the kitchen, Allison's black hair falling out of its loose bun and curling against her cheek, Luisa's heart flittering like bird wings, and this is what love feels like.

Allison sashays – everything about her, from her long, lean build to the way she moves, is dancer-like, so much so that Luisa can never get over the fact that she's an interior designer who's never set foot on a stage – into their bedroom, no doubt about to start putting the finishing touches on the decorum, and Luisa watches her and still can't believe she made it to this point. Three years ago she'd been in rehab and now she's _here,_ she's moved forward, and she is desperately in love.

"Luisa!" Allison calls. "Come here for a second."

"Yeah?" The bedroom is swathed in a golden ornate wallpaper that Allison had picked out to compliment the dark finishing of their furniture. The overall effect is gorgeous, and Luisa marvels in it. "Gosh, you're so good at what you do."

"Aren't I?" Allison smiles and kisses her on the cheek. "Look at what I found."

She shoves a box into her hands and goes back to arranging the dresser, leaving Luisa to open the box and flip through its contents in puzzlement until recognition dawns on her. "Oh!" She plops down onto the floor, criss-crossing her legs, and spreads the cards out in front of her. "Oh my gosh!"

Luisa is better at keeping up with important things than everyone expects - as a doctor, she has to be - but in her younger years she'd been terrible about losing cards, mostly because she hadn't thought they'd mattered much. After rehab, though, that feeling changed, and she'd taken to putting every card and letter anyone ever gave her in a little box in her closet. Things had gotten shuffled around when Allison moved into her old place about a year ago, though, and she hadn't been able to find it since. "I thought I lost all of these."

"I always told you they'd turn up." Allison sits down beside her. "Although I wasn't exactly devastated to think that you'd lost that first sappy love letter I ever gave you."

Grinning, Luisa picks up the letter in question. "Are you kidding? This deserves to be framed."

"Don't even think about it." Allison plucks the letter out of her hands and slips it to the bottom of the pile. "The less said about my old lovesick metaphors, the better. Hey," she goes back to her task, leaving Luisa to shuffle through the rest of the cards and skim their old messages, "when do you have to be at your office this morning?"

"In about an hour." Luisa turns the next letter over and freezes at the familiar looping cursive on the front.

She'd forgotten about this one.

Allison, blessedly distracted by decorating, doesn't notice. "Should you get ready soon?" she says over her shoulder.

"Yeah." Luisa shoves the letter she's holding into the middle of the stack and drops them all back in the box, shuts the lid firmly over memories she doesn't miss. "Yeah, I should. Thank you," she stands, "for finding this."

This will have to be another toast morning, she thinks, and she can physically feel the disapproval emanating from the still-untouched cookbook Petra had given them as a wedding gift.

(Although it was not a gift so much as a jab at Luisa's lack of... refined culinary abilities. She's not  _bad,_ she's just not  _fantastic,_ and she doesn't think it's a big deal.

Nonetheless, Luisa appreciates the jabs, which are so much more bearable than the saccharine sweetness Petra used to give her. Now she's starting to feel like family.)

She drops two pieces of bread into the toaster and, when she picks her phone up to check the time, she notices that while she was in the bedroom, she'd missed a call from-

Oh,  _honestly?_ Speak of the devil, think of the devil, find an old letter from the devil... but why is Rose calling her, anyway?

A year ago this would have shaken her, but now she's just confused, because Rose doesn't call her, ever – the two of them seem to function best as humans when they keep their interaction to a minimum, and if they do need to talk they tend to stick to texting, like the rest of the population – and does this mean Luisa should call her back, or…

 _Honestly._ Rose doesn't get to do this _._ Luisa had spent the better part of 2010 being consumed by thoughts of her. She's moved on. For god's sake, she's _married._ Rose does _not_ get to do this.

And, if she's being truthful, Luisa isn't in love with Rose. At least not anymore (and she's still not sure if she was ever even in love with Rose, or if she was just in love with the idea of Rose). Somewhere along the lines she'd realized she really and truly _had_ fallen for Allison, fallen hard, and this is the life she's living now, and it's nice and it's warm and things are okay.

But before she'd built this life, Rose had always had a way of weaseling herself into Luisa's brain if she let her. And she isn't going to let her.

She won't call Rose back, she decides, and she's glad to find it's an easy choice to make. If it had been important, she would have left a voicemail, or she would have texted.

Rose does _not_ have power over her anymore.

"Luisa?"

Luisa drops her phone onto the counter like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't be.

Her wife’s head is poked into the kitchen, her nose wrinkling. "Is something burning?"

"Huh?" Her head breaks the surface after being underwater with her thoughts, and Luisa's other senses tune back into reality.

And yes, something is definitely burning.

"Oh. Oh my god." She rushes to the toaster, yanks out two matching slabs of charred toast, and drops them onto a plate. So much for breakfast.

Allison is laughing; her laugh is loud and always swelled with joy. "Just burnt toast, huh?"

"Yeah." Luisa scrapes her finger on the bread, the crumbs that stick to her finger looking like bits of charcoal. "Just burnt toast."

"Some things never change."

"I was distracted."

"By what?"

(Rose doesn't have power over her anymore.)

"Nothing important."

She dumps the ruined toast into the garbage can.

 

* * *

 

**one year ago**

Luisa's still gripping a tear-stained Kleenex in her hand when she answers the door. Her eyes are undoubtedly red-rimmed and puffy; she probably should've splashed some water on her face and made herself look like she isn't completely distraught, but she's been a little preoccupied.

"Jeez, Luisa, you look awful." Rafael, on the other hand, looks _good._ Really good. Way too good for someone with cancer.

 _Cancer_. The word had nestled itself into the corner of her brain the moment he told her, a tiny little blade that her fingers can’t find, digging into the side of her head, just enough to hurt, just enough to make her bleed.

Instead of responding, she launches herself at her brother, throws her arms around him so tightly that he couldn’t shake her off if he tried. But he doesn’t try. He wraps his arms around her too, tucks his head into her shoulder the way he used to when they were kids.

Except when they were kids, she was his older sister. Big Sis Luisa. Taller than him, even. Now he towers over her, and his arms envelop her entirely, and she feels small. She feels so small.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispers, and she wonders which one of them he’s talking to.

When they finally pull away from each other, they’re both dry-eyed, but there’s a burning ache in her chest, and none of her efforts in the past few hours to smother it have succeeded.

“We need to talk,” she says, walking towards her kitchen and not bothering to tell him to follow. He knows the drill. They may be out of practice, but he knows. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Rafael sends a smile in her direction, but he has the decency to look nervous about it. “Are– are you mad? That I told you over the phone?”

Is she? When he’d called her, she’d picked up and gone straight into yammering on about Allison, late work nights or something or other, and it hadn’t been until he’d said her name – once, that was all it had taken - that she'd heard the serious note in his voice and realized something was wrong.

She’d slammed her cellphone onto the counter, she’d pounded her fists against the fridge a few dozen times, and yeah, she’d definitely had a few choice words for God or Mother Earth or whoever the hell had been listening, and more than anything she’d wanted to drop the rest of her life and hug her brother right then and there. No. She’s isn’t mad. Screw mad. She’s _furious._

But not at him.

“Luisa?”

She can still do this. She can be the big sister again. It’s been years, so many, too many, but she can do this.

Luisa ignores her brother’s confusion and rifles through her freezer until she finds the container of ice cream that’s hidden in a drawer behind the bags of frozen things (there’s an unspoken rule in the house that anything chocolate, no matter its origins, is fair game if left in plain sight; Luisa once caught a glimpse of a package of Oreos tucked away under Allison’s bras). Then she grabs two spoons out of the silverware drawer, and, weapons in hand, she hops up into a sitting position on the kitchen counter.

“Come sit.”

She can do this.

Rafael obliges. She notices (immediately, and she hates herself for that) that he sits farther than he ever used to, and for the millionth she wants to scream at the both of them for letting life ruin the safety they used to find in each other. Still, he takes the spoon when she hands it to him, and when she opens up the ice cream, his smile meets his eyes.

He digs into a chunk of brownie without hesitation. “I see you still hoard this stuff like you’re some sort of Ben and Jerry’s dragon.”

“We all have our vices.” She should know. They both should. “You never know when you’re gonna need it.”

“This is a brand new carton.”

“I was doing a pretty good job until now of not needing it.”

Eating turns out to be a good way for them to avoid the conversation, but eventually the silence gets to be too much, and the elephant in the room is so looming and oppressive that it’s getting hard to breathe. Luisa lets this next bite slowly melt across her tongue before she forces herself to clear her throat and say, “So. Cancer.”

“Prostate cancer.” At the very least, he doesn't dodge her. “It’s common in men.”

“In their _seventies_.” Luisa leans back and rubs her temples. Her doctor brain and her sister brain are engaging in nuclear warfare, her skull the unwilling battleground. “It’s more aggressive in younger men.” _Breathe,_ she reminds herself, _breathe_.

“If you’re trying to be reassuring, you may want to rework your approach.”

He smirks, like he’s proud of his own rejoinder, and she has to curl her hands into tight fights so she can’t smack the grin right off his face. “Sorry I’m so concerned.”

Rafael’s expression drops. “Look.” And, to her surprise, he lays a hand on her thigh and looks her in the eye when he says this. “I know the doctor in you wants to take over here, but this is all pretty much the opposite of your specialty. This might surprise you, but I _have_ done some research already–”

“WebMD doesn’t count.”

“– _and_ I’ve been talking to my doctor, and this is… real, Luisa. It’s real. I know that. But the survival rate is _good_. It’s _really_ good. And I was lucky. They caught it early. I am not going to die. No, Lu, look at me,” her gaze had involuntarily jerked away at the word _die_ , and he gently turns her chin back towards him, “Listen to me. I am not going to die.”

His eyes flicker back and forth between hers, desperately searching for an answer that she can’t give him. She shifts away from his too-gentle hands and his too-easy words and from him, and she stares and stares and stares, and she sees him. She  _sees_ him.

Luisa’s brother is a precocious ten-year-old hanging on his cool big sister’s heels. The two of them are just little kids, clutching each other in the corner while their dad brings home a new woman he doesn’t love every week. _Luisa and Rafael versus the world._ An invisible hand closes around her throat.

Her brother is an angry fourteen-year-old who stomps to his room and slams his door and finds every excuse to hate the world, and he’s an even angrier nineteen-year-old who refuses to pick up his sister’s calls because she’s imperfect and falling to pieces and he can’t handle the reality that the only hero he’s ever had was a fucked up mess all along.

And her brother is an adult man who still acts like a temperamental child, who rolls his eyes at his dad and goes out of his way to do all the things that will disappoint him. He’s a womanizer who used marriage as a victory, a way to say _checkmate_ to Lachlan or their dad or maybe himself.

Never has he ever been _this_.

“I don’t know you at all.” The words tumble out in a _whoosh_ of air before she can stop them. “Do I?”

He only shrugs. “Probably as well as I know you.”

“Wow.” She starts digging into the chocolate again. There isn’t enough of it for a lifetime. “I can’t believe we’re both the awful sibling.”

He picks the container of ice cream up out of his way and scoots towards her, closing the gap between them and bumping his shoulder into hers. “I’m worse.”

“I won’t argue that.” She drops her head onto his shoulder. It doesn’t feel quite natural, but she stays there anyway. “I’m… I’m sorry.” For the cancer. For herself. For all of it.

She waits for him to say _thank you_ , but instead he says, “Me too.”

“Are you…” She hesitates. “I mean… you know, it’s still okay to be scared.” She reaches her free hand behind his back so she can ruffle his hair, the way she used to when he was little. “Are you scared?”

He takes so long to answer that she doesn’t think he’s going to, and she doesn’t want to press him, but after a while he lays his spoon down, and she sees tears glisten in his eyes for the first time since he’d gotten there. “I mean," he says, "yeah."

She can do this. “Well,” she says, “I’m here for you.”

They end up talking well into the night, eventually relocating from the kitchen counter to her living room couch. They turn the lights off and the TV on so that the room is lit only by the low cast of the screen, and they flip through the channels until they find some old nineties film, not that either one of them pays it much attention. He tells her that Petra had been with him when he found out (she notices his discomfort when he brings her up, but she doesn’t say anything). He’d told his father and Rose next, and now Luisa is the only other person to know besides them.

“You can tell Allison,” he says, “but I want to tell everyone else on my own. Please.”

“Of course.” By this point Rafael is laying on the arm of the couch and Luisa is leaning against him, both of them buried under a blanket together. She hadn’t known just how badly she’d been yearning for this closeness again until now, and she wishes it never had to end. “But can we go back to the fact that you told Dad in person? The hell? Now I think maybe I _am_ mad you told me over the phone.”

“Don’t be,” he says. “I told you over the phone because- I don’t know. I knew it’d be harder to tell you. Dad’s gotten easier for me to deal with. And I knew if I told him while Rose was there that she could be kind of a buffer. But you… I guess I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing you so upset, and I knew you would be, and that you’d want to talk, and I wasn’t going to be ready to talk right then, and I don’t know if this is making any sense.”

“No, it does, it really does.” It had always been hard for him to watch her in her weaker moments, and sometimes she resents him for it and other times all she can do is love him. And it means something, she thinks. It means something that he still cares enough about her that it’s hard for him to watch her hurt. But this isn’t about her, and she has a feeling _he’s_ hurting more than he wants her to know. “How did Dad take it?”

“It was… weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?”

“Good. I think. I mean, he was really upset, but it… I don’t know. He even _hugged_ me.”

“He _hugged_ you? Raf, I think you may have made our dad short-circuit.”

“Right?” Even in the dark, she can see him smile. “Rose was pretty upset too, actually.”

She frowns at the name (but really, what’s new). “Rose?”

“Yeah. I think she was kind of worried about you, actually, about how you’d take it. Look, I don’t know what your deal with her is, but I think she really does care about you. You should call her tomorrow. Let her and Dad know you’re not gonna go on a bender or something.” He pauses. “You’re not… gonna go on a bender, are you?”

“No,” she says. “You’ve got your big sister,” she prods him with her foot, “whether you like it or not. And good thing, because your pleasure-seeking ass is going to need someone who will force you to rest, and I’m not sure it’s going to be Petra.”

When he doesn’t laugh, she sits up. “Hey. Are you okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. That wasn’t nice of me.”

“No, it’s not that.” But it’s something, or else he’s incredibly invested in _Mrs. Doubtfire_.

“Then what?”

“My doctor said,” he clears his throat a few times, “um. My doctor said that after all the chemotherapy is said and done, there’s a really good chance I won’t be able to have kids.”

“Oh.” Ever since Petra’s miscarriage, no one has ever really dared bring the idea of kids up around either of them. Before Petra had gotten pregnant, Luisa hadn’t even known Rafael _wanted_ kids, given how freewheeling he's always been. But it was plain for anyone to see that the miscarriage had devastated him. “Oh.”

“There’s sperm banking, so it’s not that I don’t have any options. But yeah. I’m probably going to be infertile. And it’s just weird to think about.” He pauses, thinks long and hard before he says this next part. “And if I’m only going to have one shot, I’m… I don’t know if I want to take it with Petra.”

“ _Oh_.”

She’s not surprised. She’s been silently thinking to herself for nearly a year now that Rafael has fallen out of love and hasn’t wanted to admit it. But what terrible timing for all of this. Her brother. Cancer. It isn’t fair. None of this is. 

She leans back against him and takes his hand, squeezes it. “It’s going to be okay. And you have me. You do. I promise.” It’s all she can give him right now.

But he squeezes her hand back. And it’s enough. “Thank you.”

They fall asleep on the couch like that, nestled against each other. When she wakes up the next morning, he’s still crashed out, so she lays the blanket over him and tiptoes out of the room to put on a pot of coffee, the whole time remembering his words about Rose the night before.

 _I don’t know what your deal with her is._ Hoo boy. He doesn’t know the _half_ of it.

_But I think she really does care about you. You should call her tomorrow._

And while the coffee pot whistles, she perches up onto the counter with her phone in her hand and considers it. Because she may be a big sister again, but deep in her chest, she still really, _really_  wants to cry.

But her tears and her bruises aren’t Rose’s anymore. Rose can care about Luisa all she wants – and damn it, she may not be in love with her anymore, but Luisa would be lying if she said she didn’t still care about Rose. But they don't owe each other anything.

So she abandons her phone and quietly makes her way back into the living room. Curled up on the couch, Rafael looks ten years old again. Luisa leans over and presses a kiss onto his forehead. She’s still scared out of her mind, but she’ll be okay. _He’ll_ be okay.

 _I can do this_ , she thinks _, I can do this_. And she realizes, standing there, looking at her little brother, that she believes it.

* * *

 

**last night**

_"Get out."_

_"Luisa, please- please, just let me-"_

_"Get out!"_

She feels numb.

She wants to feel upset, she wants to feel  _angry,_ she wants to at least feel a little fucking surprised, but when Allison, sobbing, stumbles out the door with her assistant on her heels, Luisa just feels _numb._

_"Can't we just talk?"_

_"I don't want to talk, I want you to put your clothes on and take_ her _and get the hell out of here!"_

Ten minutes tick by and she doesn't move, just sits in front of the door, waiting for someone to walk in and say _this isn't real, Luisa. Wake up, Luisa. Nothing has changed, Luisa._

Her phone buzzes once, twice, seven times, the screen lighting up with the name _Allison_ against a screensaver of long legs and dark hair and a face full of love.

The first six times, Luisa lets it ring all the way through, revels in the thought of Allison on the other end of the line, pleas on her lips, a long-winded speech about _love versus lust_ and _she didn't mean anything to me_ and _don't let one mistake ruin two years of marriage,_ as if _Luisa_ is the one who'll be destroying everything they had built by walking away.

The seventh time, she switches her phone to silent so she can’t let herself answer. She doesn't want Allison's bullshit excuses. She doesn't want any of it.

Her hands trembling at her side, she stands on shaky legs and walks robotically to the kitchen, crawls onto the counter, and swings open the door to the liquor cabinet above the stove.

She hasn't touched anything in here in both years of her marriage – the only reason she keeps it stocked at all is because she has self-control, damn it, and Allison loves wine, and Luisa loves Allison. Loved. Loves? God, she doesn't know, and who the fuck cares anymore.

One by one she pulls out the bottles, builds a castle of alcohol on the counter, until the cabinet is empty. She jumps back down to the floor and grasps a bottle of white wine by the neck. She stares, unfocused, at the wall, until her hand stings from gripping it so hard. And then she smashes it on the tile floor.

It shatters into a million pieces that fly out in every direction and Luisa remembers too late that she's barefoot, but she's learned how to step around the broken pieces of her life, so she grabs another bottle, smashes it too. The pungent odor of booze overflows her nostrils and _good things are always temporary_ and she cracks a bottle of scotch against the counter and watches the contents spill down into the sea of wreckage she's creating.

She smashes them, smashes all of them, every single bottle of Chardonnay and Merlot and Pinot-fucking-Noir, leaps over the mess and retrieves her shoes just so she can feel the satisfaction of grinding the remnants under her heels.

When she's done, she doesn't feel any better. But if she hadn't done it, she'd be halfway through her second bottle by now.

( _This, Dad, is what shattered glass looks like._ )

She surveys the disaster area, thinks _I should clean this up_  but she's _tired_ and she's _numb_  and it'll still be here tomorrow, and she'll still be here tomorrow, so she leaves it for the morning, when she'll either feel better or be too exhausted to feel worse.

The sheets in the bedroom smell like sex and the pillows smell like _her_ and Luisa smells like a vineyard, so she tears off her dress and hops in the shower. She doesn't pay attention to what temperature the water is – she thinks it's hot because her skin grows flushed and she's lightheaded, but she can't tell, really, because she can't feel it at all.

_"Can't we just talk?"_

"Talk about what, Allison?" she asks the wall of the shower. "Talk about sex and wine and infidelity? Talk about blonde hair in the drain and two cups in the dishwasher," her voice is hoarse and her vision is blurry, "and late nights and you were never good at covering up your tracks and doctors see details, but I know how to lie to myself, and so you went and showed me the big picture, because why not, right? Why not go ahead and ruin everything."

The wall doesn't answer.

"Why not go ahead and ruin me."

She turns off the water.

The bed in the guest room hasn't been slept in in months, not since Allison's sister last visited, and it welcomes her with its unscented, unrumpled sheets. She collapses onto the blue floral comforter with her phone in her hand (nine missed calls, but the most recent was fifteen minutes ago) and what’s wrong with her, what the hell is _wrong_ with her, that the person she wants to call right now is _Rose_.

And god, what a hypocrite is she? Luisa may have never cheated on her wife, but she’d cheated on her girlfriend, back before she got her shit together. Try as she might, she hasn’t forgotten those days where, some nights, for a few hours Rose was _hers_ , the nights they’d run off together and fall into bed and Luisa would show her all her scars and trick herself into thinking this time it would last, but it never did. It never did.

None of this is Rose's fault and that makes her angry, because she wants all of it to be Rose's fault because she wants to call Rose and scream and scream and scream at her until her throat is raw.

She's fuming now, fists clenched and shaking and why, oh, _why_ is it that she loves Allison and she doesn't love Rose, can't love Rose, yet Rose is still the one, always the one who is able to make her _feel?_

She hadn't been enough for Rose and now she's not even enough for her own wife, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

But this pain – it won't last forever. It's temporary too. Everything is.

Somehow, it's that thought that finally has her breaking down in tears.

 

* * *

 

 **now**  

The first rule of living life as Luisa Alver: things can always get worse.

The second rule: when she screws up, there is always, without fail, collateral damage.

According to her file, Jane Gloriana Villanueva is twenty-three years old, five-foot three-inches, and she's the picture of health – which is good, because there's a twenty percent chance she's going to get pregnant.

From  _Rafael's sperm._

(That, of course, is not in the file.)

Her license – oh, god, she's already on probation, there's no _way_ her license won't be revoked for this, and she can already see it, years of med school swirling down the drain with the snap of a finger.

And Rafael... she doesn't want to poke at that with a ten-foot pole. They’re finally, finally okay, finally in _such_ a good place, and now she's shot that to hell.

She wants to call Allison but Allison is lost to her (Allison has left her eleven messages today; Luisa may have been the explosion, but Allison had been the catalyst; _Allison was a good thing, Allison was temporary)_ and her brother isn't even remotely an option, and the idea of having an actual heart-to-heart with her father would be enough to make her laugh if she wasn't currently freaking out, and

Oh.

Of course.

She always ends up here.

She almost talks herself out of it; even as she pulls up Rose's number, she's almost able to make herself put her phone down. But for once, this _is_ the person she needs to call. There'll be legal jargon she won't be able to translate, and oh, god, there'll probably be a lawsuit and her whole family is going to hate her. Luisa is already soaked in gasoline, so why not go ahead and light the match?

The phone rings exactly four times _(_ Luisa counts, focuses on _beep, beep, beep, beep_ instead of the urge in her chest to start hyperventilating; she hasn't had a panic attack in years and she's not about to have one now) before Rose picks up and says, in that soft, familiar voice, "Luisa?"

_How is it that you've been the only constant?_

Luisa inhales. Counts to one, two, three, four.

_You were always permanent._

Exhales.

"Hey," she says, "I need your help."


End file.
